Abdo: Another Army rejection letter

I came back from vacation this morning and wasn’t at all surprised to see another rejection letter in the mail from the Department of the Army.

It came from the service’s Criminal Law Division and told me in no uncertain terms that it may be a long, long time before we know more about what the Army accused Pfc. Naser Abdo of doing on a government computer.

Before Abdo came to Killeen, where authorities said he was plotting a terrorist attack, the young Fort Campbell, Ky., infantryman was in deep trouble. It is the kind of trouble that may well bear on his state of mind and the actions he took after fleeing the post and going absent without leave. The Army accused Abdo, a Muslim conscientious objector, of having child pornography on his computer. It had held an Article 32 evidentiary hearing, with the case later referred for court-martial.

Article 32′s are fact-finding investigations open to the public. We reported on one last spring for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, accused of killing 13 people and wounding 32 more in a Nov. 5, 2009 shooting spree on Fort Hood. I don’t know for sure if the media reported on Abdo’s hearing, but once it ended, the investigating officer who presided over it wrote a report.

Since the post’s convening authority, typically its commander, referred the case to trial it is safe to assume that the investigating officer reported there was enough evidence to try the case. The report would spell out what the Article 32 revealed, but the Army initially refused to release it and the Office of the Judge Advocate General seconded the motion.

“These documents are withheld,” Army Lt. Col. Charles D. Lozano, acting chief of the criminal law division, wrote in an Oct. 5 letter. “Adjudication of the case is pending. Release of these documents could reasonably be expected to interfere with law enforcement proceedings, would deprive Pfc. Abdo of a fair trial or impartial adjudication and could also reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

Of course, he doesn’t explain just how the Article 32 investigator’s report would interfere with the investigation of the case or a trial itself. You could argue that Killeen Police Chief Dennis Baldwin’s claim that Abdo was mapping a “terror plot” did more to prejudice jury selection than any other single thing so far reported in the media. You could contend that Special Agent Michael Brogan’s testimony in one of Abdo’s federal hearings was just as damning. “He said he was intending to make a massive attack in the Killeen-Fort Hood area,” Brogan said of Abdo.

Oh, and there’s Abdo himself, refusing to stand as U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Manske entered the courtroom on the day of his first hearing. Four U.S. Marshals came to his side and forced him out of his chair. At the end of the brief proceeding, with the judge out of chambers, Abdo defiantly cried out, ”Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, Iraq 2006! Nidal Hasan, Fort Hood 2009!” He was referring to Hasan, now facing the death penalty in a trial to be held at Fort Hood this spring, and an Iraqi girl who was raped and killed by American soldiers in Mahmoudiya five years ago.

You get the idea. The Army says it is trying to protect Abdo’s rights, yet you wonder how a story on the details of his Article 32 at Fort Campbell possibly could complicate things for him. And the suggestion that details of the Fort Campbell hearing could compromise Abdo’s privacy is, frankly, laughable. The Article 32 is a public proceeding, just as trials are, and the investigating officer’s recommendations are routinely provided to media.

We’re pushing to know what happened because it may shed light on Abdo and, perhaps, the incident in Killeen, and this isn’t the end of the road. And we are doing the same thing with an Article 32 recommendation for Hasan that evidently played a role in the decision to order a trial for him in 2012.

At the end of his letter, Lozano said we have 60 days to appeal his decision. You can bet we’re appealing, but don’t read that to mean I’m optimistic about the outcome. The Army seems to have two standards for the release of Article 32 reports. If the case is obscure, they’ll gladly hand them over to the media. But if it’s a big case, one with a profile, watch out.